


A Matter of Succession

by Ashling



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/F, It's not violent, but nor is it traumatizing, it's not romantic, it's some other genre I don't even know, so dark it's not even angst at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:32:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: “You fucked me,” Jessie says, “And then you fucked me.”“Yes."





	A Matter of Succession

**Author's Note:**

> Written for peakystitches on tumblr, who wanted Jessie x Ada but angst angst angst and dark dark dark. Well, I'm pretty sure I made it dark. So there you go, sweetheart, I love you. (I'm hethrewmyheartinthecut on tumblr [and I'm open to requests.](http://hethrewmyheartinthecut.tumblr.com/post/175850990609/requests-are-open-you-can-ask-for-any-of-the))

“You fucked us.”

Ada doesn’t turn around, at first. She doesn’t want to. Jessie rarely swears, and rarely swears like that, and Ada knew this was going to be ugly, but fuck if those three words that Jessie spat as she swept into the room don’t still come sharp.

Ada swivels her chair around, head at an angle, cigarette between two fingers, lipstick immaculate. Immaculate entire. “What about it?”

Jessie gesticulates, the way she does when her whole mind and body are in the words. “We had the wage inflation matching in our grasp, and then you undercut the entire strike by sending out conflicting messages from us. From me. My fucking branch of the Party!” She whips out a piece of paper with a very specific letterhead on it. Neither of them has to look at it. They know every word there.

Ada doesn’t match the shout. All is teatime smoothness. “Shelby Limited saw an opportunity to support a policy that would bring the city to an amicable arrangement, to the benefit of all parties involved.”

“I don’t care what chess pieces Tommy moved on the board to get the job done. Only you could have told him to do it, because only you would have had the fucking knowledge!”

“He’s been quite interested in the cause lately.” Ada exhales smoke slowly, then discards the cigarette in an ashtray with the precision of a jeweller setting a diamond. She raises one perfect eyebrow. “Haven’t you been taking him to meetings?”

“Three years of work down the drain and tens of thousands of workers hurt because you’re upset that I’ve fucked your brother?”

“Insult me properly please, or not at all.” There is no please in Ada’s voice.

Jessie puts both hands on Ada’s desk, and leans in. Ada knows that Jessie can smell her perfume from there. Jessie wears no perfume at all. Her eyes are dark as Ada has ever seen them.

“You fucked me,” Jessie says, “And then you fucked me.”

“Yes. It’s called business.”

“I thought you were capable of something more.”

Ada doesn’t hesitate in her answer. “That was also business.”

Jessie’s hands fall. Her back straightens. The rage is still there, but it’s calming under a greater form of anger, one fueled not by outrage but by despair.

“You sound just like him,” Jessie says. Until now, she has always been careful not to bash Tommy to his sister, or at least no more than Ada does herself. But now the true extent of her revulsion makes itself known, and Ada takes it in stride.

“No,” Ada says. “He sounds just like me.” Ada gestures to the sweep of papers on the desk around her, gestures at the magnificent estate around them, the city beyond, glittering gold against the night through the massive French windows. “I’ve always known how to do this, and I always wanted to. But guilt was holding me back. Shame was holding me back. Everyone else was holding me back. But I’m here now.” She stands. “I won’t apologize for who I am, or what I’ve done, or my family name. I’ve been alive for thirty-five years and I’ve never felt free until now. I’m a pinioned bird that built myself new wings. I’ve found what I was looking for.” Her lips curve into a knowing smile. “You’re not happy for me?”

“I don’t know you, how can I be happy for you?”

Under that harsh light, Ada all but glows, skin as flawless as marble, lipstick the perfect scarlet to make her lips look set in an eternal kiss, silk scarf curling in shimmering folds around her creamy neck. She has never been more beautiful, or more out of reach. She knows this. She has always had a taste for theater. “You know me,” she says. “I never pretended, from the very beginning. The bar, where they tried not to let us in. Do you remember?”

Of course Jessie does, but it’s a poisoned memory now. She shakes her head and heads for the door. Ada’s words stop her.

“You were both magnificent, in your own ways,” Ada says. “But I will eclipse both of you, and you’ll thank me for it.”

Jessie’s eyes flick up to hers. “Both?”

“My brother will be taking an indefinite leave of absence. He’s been working so hard, ever since the war. Even during his own wedding, if you can believe it.” (The joke there is that of course they both can.) “Perhaps he slipped a little; we did lose John.” The name still comes out slightly odd, slightly wrong, not quite natural. Her dead are the one thing that she cannot speak past properly. She goes on as if nothing has happened: “The holiday we prescribed Tom was not exactly beneficial. He’s lost his wife. He’s done a lot for this family. But he needs time with himself, and his son, and perhaps some professional attention.”

“I thought Ms. Stark had that covered.”

“Professional medical attention. Though you’re right, all the better if he sorts himself out before the birth of his daughter.”

“Polly won’t let you do this.”

Ada smiles slightly. “Polly’s no longer in the country.  Apparently, she misses her son. Perfectly understandable; there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Karl.”

“You’re still calling him Karl?”

“It’s his name, the one his father and I chose to give him.”

“His father would never–”

“His father–” And for the first time, Ada has to raise her voice, just slightly, and harden her voice too, to interrupt. “–was a good man. Merely mistaken about the fundamental laws of politics. Not at all wrong in intention, but as bewildered as I was then about the foundation of the world.”

“And what will you build on your capitalist foundations, Ada?”

“They’re not capitalist, and they’re not communist, Jessie. I will run the business well. Women will be paid equally with the men. Children will not be employed, and worker safety will be attended to.”

Ada can just see Jessie swallowing her objections and trying to weigh her next maneuver. “I can set up a meeting with labor leaders to discuss what worker safety protocols they need.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“How can you know what’s good for your workers if you won’t talk with them?”

“My workers, yes. But I won’t be dictated to by a small group of golden-tongued politicians. Oh, did you think you weren’t a politician merely because you never got elected? You have a constituency, a policy, and a set of punishments and rewards, like all the rest.”

“Whatever you want to call this, it’s just capitalism with a fresh coat of paint slapped on. And capitalism will never benefit the working people.”

“And you will always declare yourself an advocate for the working people. So I suppose I had better return your second-best scarf.”

“No. Keep it.” Jessie’s eyes shine with unshed tears, and whether those are tears of loss or frustration, that wasn’t what Ada wanted at all. There’s no glory of fire in Jessie right now, no fighting spirit, and Ada hates that, wants to grapple with someone of her own weight class, chased it so far and then found suddenly nothing. It’s a disappointment. These last words are a disappointment, as stilted and pedestrian as they sound even coming from Jessie’s exquisite mouth. The door shuts behind her, and Ada is left in a room that is too big for any one woman to fill.

She sits back down. She picks up her pen. Presently, she has gotten through the nightly ledgers and has a fresh cigarette in hand. There is no room, no city, too big to fill.


End file.
